Global Media and Digital Communications (Taught)

The MA Global Media and Digital Communications offers a unique non-Western critical approach to the study of media and digital transformations in political cultures, development, war, crises, social change and justice.

Focusing on Asia, Africa and the Middle East and their diasporas, it uses grounded theory and contemporary phenomena to address one of the most pressing issues in the contemporary world, the entanglement of media and digital transformations in everyday lives and what this might mean for politics and cultures. Situating media power within political and hegemonic structures and existing social inequalities, it addresses the ways in which power (and resistance to power) function in an increasingly mediated world; how power and knowledge are instrumentalised by elites; and how power is confronted through grassroots participation and activism while not losing sight of the persistence of gendered, racial, ethnic and class inequalities, and imperialism and colonialism.

The degree has two distinct specialisms. The Media and Political Cultures specialism offers a socio-historical critique of the dynamics between politics and communication, and media practices, drawing on critical interdisciplinary approaches to established Western-centric theories and practices of power, such as framing, discourse, propaganda, populism, personality politics, misinformation, racism and strategic communication. Using situated knowledges and practices from the Global South, it considers the potential for anti-colonial and anti-imperial resistance, and emerging political cultures in digital media spaces with particular focus on Asia, Africa and the Middle East and their diasporas.

The Media, Development and Justice specialism balances critical theoretical analysis of the hegemony implied by the ideas and practices of development with the practical issues surrounding the use of contemporary media, including, notably, digital technologies. Using a multidisciplinary approach, the degree interrogates the world of ideas that have shaped modern thought and civilisations, including but not limited to the ideas of justice and comparative equity.